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Is one of 1,200 illegal immigrants held in NE
By JULIE MASIS
An illegal immigrant from India handwrote a petition from a Massachusetts
medium security prison in January asking the Department of Homeland Security
to release him.
Gulbarg Singh is requesting the government release him because he has been
detained for longer than six months, considered the maximum time period the
government is supposed to detain people who are awaiting deportation. Singh,
who could not be reached for this story, has no lawyer and has been in
custody for nearly 10 months, since the middle of June.
The petitioner paid taxes for ten years, worked hard and has never been on
public assistance, he wrote about himself from the Plymouth County
Correctional Facility in his neat, large cursive script that has no spelling
errors. The petitioner has never committed any crime and contributes
actively and constructively to the society and poses no danger to anyone as
clearly reflected in his criminal record and is not a flight risk.
When an illegal immigrant hasnt received his or her travel documents to
their home country after six months in prison, he or she can request to be
released to await deportation outside custody. The released immigrants are
expected to check in with immigration officials once a month and can be
deported when their travel documents come through.
But the U.S. government, in its response to Singhs petition, maintains that
he should not be released because his travel documents to India are
forthcoming and because India has not rejected him as a citizen. In a letter
dated March 5, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement states that he
entered the United States without inspection at Brownsville, Texas, on
October 17, 1996, and that he should not be released because he is believed
to be a flight risk.
The letter continues to say that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is
confident that the consul will issue Singhs travel documents soon and that
his removal will occur in the reasonably foreseeable future.
According to David Potvin, a removal officer at the Department of Homeland
Security, whose job is to act as a liaison with the Consulate of India
concerning the repatriation of Indian nationals who are detained in
Massachusetts, the department first requested an Indian travel document for
Singh on July 6 and has been in touch with the Indian Ministry of Home
Affairs in New Delhi.
However the documents have not yet come through.
The Consulate General of India in New York and the Embassy of India in
Washington, D.C. did not return phone calls asking for a comment on Singhs
case or for an explanation about why his travel documents arent ready
months after the U.S. government requested them.
However Laura Rotolo, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union,
said Singhs case is not unusual.
Approximately 1,200 illegal immigrants are currently held in prisons all
over New England, awaiting deportation to their home countries, she said.
They are not entitled to lawyers unless they can pay for one on their own
and are often detained longer than the maximum six month period, she said.
They are often arrested in the middle of the night in unannounced raids and
are thrown in prison together with criminals.
Immigration detention is the number one fastest-growing incarceration in
the country, she said. So the jails are just filling up with immigrants
who never committed a crime. ... Its definitely one of the issues we see
quite a bit here in Massachusetts.
Although Rotolo said she does not know anything specific about Singhs case,
she said it is likely he wrote the petition for release after learning about
it from another detainee. Rotolo also said she does not have specific
information about how many of the 1,200 immigrant detainees in New England
are South Asian, how many of them have been held for longer than six months
and how many do not have attorneys.
Immigration is not very good about releasing statistics like that, she
said.
In addition, Rotolo said that mistakes can happen, especially with people
who have very common names.
They could be wrong, they could have his file wrong. Singh is not an
uncommon name, she said.
Navjeet Singh, the New England director of the of the Sikh American Legal
Defense and Education Fund, said he knows of at least one Sikh person who
was detained in Plymouth for six months a few years ago because of a
mistake. The mans name appeared on the governments deportation list after
a letter that requested him to appear in court was not forwarded to his new
address.
INDIA New England learned about Gulbarg Singhs detainment by typing common
Indian names into the online court database PACER in mid-March. The
newspaper has been unable to speak to Singh because prisoners cannot receive
phone calls or visits from people who are not on their guest list. INDIA New
England received no reply to a letter that was mailed to Singh at the
Plymouth County Correctional Facility requesting that he phone a reporter.
Paula Grenier, who works for the Department of Homeland Security, did not
respond to an email asking for an in-person interview with Singh.
